Research On Procurement Management & Organization Of Virtual Procurement Center For Construction

Construction project is aimed at building fixed assets. Construction material and equipments which hold great proportion in total construction cost will affect the end construction achievement. However, traditional construction management do not attach importance to the activities about construction logistics. It limites the potential develpment of procurement management for construction. With advancing of Supply Chain Management and Information Technology, it brings great changes in construction. Therefore appling with the advanced management theories and tools, this thesis studies the topic of construction project material and equipments procurement from the view of purchase side and explores the optimization method of construction procurement management, which is theoretically and realistically meaningful.The thesis is composed of four parts: first, the development history of purcurement and procurement management are elaborated and researches on procurement management, construction logistics, construction supply chain management, virtual enterprise and virtual procurement management are summarized and analyzed, and the main shortages in previous studies are pointed out; Second, the organization mode of Virtual Procurement Center for Construction (VPCC) are studied; Third, contract management of construction procurement management in VPCC is introduced; Fourth, plan management of construction procurement management based on VPCC is studied.In the first part, the development of procurement, construction procurement and interrelated theories are reviewed. Construction supply chain management, construction logistics, virtual enterprise and virtual procurement are summarized and analyzed, and the main shortages in the studies are pointed out. All those establish a sound base for following studies.At the beginning of the second part, the definition on Virtual Procurement Center for Construction (VPCC), the charater of its organization structure, and the basic target of its operation are rasied. Then the formation of virtual value chain on VPCC is analyzed based on virtual value chain theory(VCCT) and the series of three phase to construct the virtual value chain is put forward. After analyzing three organization structure related topics which are the classification of members of VPCC, organization models and dynamic processes of VPCC operation, the applications of different information tools in VPCC operation are summed up at the end of this part.In the third part, the research focused on contract management which include the contractual structure of VPCC and contract management mechanism of the purchasing side. Firstly, construction materials were divided by the Kraljic metrix and the characteristics of those materials were analyzed. Secondly, the contractual structure of VPCC was analyzed on the basis of RDT( Resource Dependency Theory). The contractual structure preference of different types of suppliers when they cooperate with their upstream purchsers were indicated. A operational mode for VPCC was suggested based on contract-net theory. Finally, ex ante, concurrent and ex post contractural control mechanism were established on the basis of previous contract-net to realize effective contract control and management between the contraction project purchasers and suppliers.The fourth part was mainly about the procurement plan of the VPCC. First, the characteristics of procurement plan of the VPCC's purchase side was suggested. Second, a combined matrix of construction materials purchasing was created and targeted supplier strategies were suggested against the purchasing mix. Third, methods of purchase plan management for two key materials, stratigic materials and leveraged materials, were proposed in the VPCC flat. There are stochastic model of intergeting construction programme to procurement for construction leveraged materials and procurement model based on activities of group for large scale construction equipments.